1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a rotary cutting apparatus for use in cutting and removing objects such as pills created on the surface of a textile product.
2. Description of Related Art
Textile products such as clothes and carpets have the problem that fibers on their surface are gathered into pills by the function of friction applied during use and deteriorate the appearance of the products. Conventionally, a rotary cutting apparatus aiming at cutting and removing such pills has been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 07-88797 (1995)).
This rotary cutting apparatus comprises a rotary blade rotating radially in a housing, and a fixed blade in the form of a thin plate attached to cover an opening formed in the housing along the outer circumference of the rotary blade. A cutting blade extending in an axial direction is attached on the outer circumference of the rotary blade, and a plurality of through-holes (blade holes) having a blade part on the periphery thereof are formed throughout the length and breadth of the fixed blade so that the cutting blade and the blade holes come into slide-contact with each other on the rotating circumference of the rotary blade and perform a cutting function.
The rotary cutting apparatus thus constructed is used by placing the outer surface of the fixed blade covering the opening of the housing on the surface of a textile product on which pills are created and rotating the rotary blade. Hence, the pills are received in the blade holes disposed in the fixed blade, protrude toward the inside, and are cut by the function of the cutting blade of the rotary blade that comes into slide-contact with the blade holes.
Further, in the rotary cutting apparatus disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 07-88797 (1995), the housing is connected to a dust sucking hose of a vacuum cleaner so that intake of air into the dust sucking hose is performed through the opening formed in the housing, and the rotary blade is constructed as an impeller that generates rotational force by the function of intake air.
According to this structure, a power source to be used exclusively for rotating the rotary blade is not required, and the reception of pills in the blade holes of the fixed blade is facilitated by the function of intake air. It is therefore possible to surely achieve the purpose of removing pills of the textile product with a simple structure. Moreover, since the cut pills are sucked and collected by the dust sucking hose together with the intake air, no post process is required, and improved handling is achieved.
In order to surely cut the pills received by the blade holes with the rotary cutting apparatus constructed as described above, it is important to bring the cutting blade attached to the circumferential surface of the rotary blade into slide-contact with the inner surface of the fixed blade having the blade holes, without clearance therebetween.
However, since the fixed blade is a thin plate fixed and supported along the opening of the housing and the housing is a molded product made of resin for which it is hard to obtain high accuracy of form, it is difficult to perform assembling by eliminating a clearance between the cutting blade of the rotary blade and the blade holes of the fixed blade.
The rotary cutting apparatus constructed to cut an object between the rotary blade having a cutting blade on the outer circumference and the fixed blade in the form of a thin plate having blade holes has been put into practical use as an electric shaver. In this kind of shaver, the clearance between the cutting blade and the blade holes is eliminated as much as possible by improving the molding precision and processing precision of the fixed blade, and satisfactory cutting performance is realized by reliable cutting.
However, since a rotary cutting apparatus constructed to cut and remove pills created on the surface of a textile product may be used for large-area textile products such as carpets, the size of the fixed blade is inevitably large as well as the rotary blade and the housing. Thus, similarly to the shaver, it is difficult to eliminate the clearance by improving the molding and processing precisions of the fixed blade.
Further, in the rotary cutting apparatus constructed as described above, the rotary blade is a molded product made of resin comprising a central boss part and a plurality of vanes attached at equal intervals on the circumference of the boss part, and rotational force is generated by causing the intake air to function on the vanes.
However, since the rotational force actually obtained by such a rotary blade is light rotational force regardless of the rotation speed, pills may not be surely cut between the cutting blade on the circumference of the rotary blade and the blade holes of the fixed blade, and there is a possibility that the pills may remain without being cut. In particular, when the rotary cutting apparatus is used for a textile product on which many pills are created, the pills remaining without being cut may be caught between the cutting blade and the blade holes and may interfere with the rotation of the rotary blade. Further, such pills may stop the rotation of the rotary blade, and may cause the problem that the process of pulling out the caught pills must be performed in order to continue the cutting operation.
Although this problem is lessened by adopting a large-diameter rotary blade, if the large-diameter rotary blade is used, the size of the housing for accommodating the rotary blade becomes larger, and thus this is not a desirable measure. Moreover, even when the rotation speed of the rotary blade is increased extremely, the rotation speed will be gradually decreased by the pills entering continuously from the blade holes of the fixed blade, and finally the rotation will be stopped. In this case, unpleasant noise (wind noise) is generated by the rotary blade rotating at a high speed.